Timeline

  • 1978 - 1981Democracy Wall

    The Democracy Wall movement of November 1978 to spring 1981 is usually regarded as the beginning of China's contemporary democracy movement. The Democracy Wall movement focused on the elimination of bureaucratism and the bureaucratic class...   MORE
  • 1986Student Demonstrations

    The demonstrations started in Hefei before spreading to other cities such as Shanghai and Nanjing. The demonstrations started in the city of Hefei before spreading to other cities such as Shanghai and Nanjing...   MORE
  • 1989Tiananmen Square protests and massacre

    In the Spring of 1989, hundreds of thousands of students, laborers and others gathered in Tiananmen Square to mourn the death of CCP General Secretary Hu Yaobang. The non-violent gathering soon morphed into a riot advocating greater transparency, reform, and eventually, democracy. In the early morning of 4 June 1989, the People's Liberation Army was mobilized to disperse the crowds by using weapons to open fire on the crowd, killing several hundred to thousands of Chinese citizens...   MORE
  • 2011Chinese pro-democracy protests

    The 2011 Chinese pro-democracy protests, also known as the Greater Chinese Democratic Jasmine Revolution, refer to public assemblies in over a dozen cities in China starting on 20 February 2011, inspired by and named after the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia...   MORE
  • 2011Wukan protests

    The Wukan protests, also known as the siege of Wukan, was an anti-corruption protest that began in September 2011, and escalated in December 2011 with the expulsion of officials by villagers, the siege of the town by police, and subsequent detente in the village of Wukan, in the east of Guangdong province...   MORE
  • 2022Sitong Bridge protest

    On 13 October 2022, a protest on Sitong Bridge in Beijing was held by a protestor who posted a banner on the bridge and burnt tyres. Information on the protest spread rapidly on online social media and was quickly censored by Chinese authorities. Similar protest slogans subsequently appeared as graffiti in other cities in China and via AirDrop...   MORE
  • 2022Protests against COVID-19 lockdowns

    In November 2022, following the 2022 Urumqi fire, solidarity protests against the government's Zero-COVID policies erupted in Urumqi and across the country. In Shanghai, hundreds chanted "Step down, Xi Jinping! Step down, Communist Party!"...   MORE